


Rituals

by imkerfuffled



Series: 25 Days of Ficlet Prompts [9]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Basically a jumble of mcu and comics backstory with a big dash of agent Carter thrown in, F/M, rated for brief language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-02-28
Packaged: 2018-03-15 15:46:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3452870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imkerfuffled/pseuds/imkerfuffled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even after so many years, Natasha slept with her left arm above her head, as if the ghost of her handcuffs still tied it to the bedpost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rituals

Natasha still slept with her left arm above her head. 

It was an improvement over when Clint first met her, when she still handcuffed herself to the bedpost, assuming the bed allowed it and she slept alone. She knew enough then to know it wasn’t normal, and what it meant about the people who taught her it was, but, as they say, old habits die hard. 

Clint didn’t know what the handcuffs were for when he first came across them, while searching through her meager possessions for bandages. He assumed she used them for chaining up prisoners, or impersonating police, or maybe even sex—he had no clue. That was during that first week, in Budapest. He didn’t really know her then. 

Much later, the first time they had to share a hotel room for a case, she lay motionless on her back with one arm curled up around her head to rest near the bedpost, and she didn’t sleep a wink. Clint had seen the slight, persistent scarring around her wrist before, but he didn’t put two and two together until three weeks into another mission. 

It was in Russia, and they were going up against another Black Widow. 

SHIELD had wanted to send a different team—one they could trust not to defect back to the KGB or try to recruit the target—but Natasha insisted she go, and Clint convinced them no one else could do it, and before long they were both hot on the trail of the loyal Widow agent. 

Clint realized immediately what a mistake it had been to tell Coulson Natasha was ready for this mission. She was strong—the strongest person Clint had ever known—but she wasn’t invincible. Between the demands of the mission, the stress of working extra-hard to prove herself to SHIELD, and the terrible memories resurfacing with the other Red Room trainee… She was spread too thin. She couldn’t do it. 

And then one night she told him everything. All the stories and information SHIELD had tried to wheedle out of her after she was recruited those many months ago. All the things about her past that Clint, and later Coulson, had protected her from having to reveal to the invasive government agency they were all a part of. 

She began by showing him the handcuffs. 

“They’re not for sex,” she said. 

“I figured as much.” Clint knew her well enough by then to recognize her deadpan humor. 

“They’re…” she trailed off, holding up her bare left wrist in a fruitless attempt at wordless explanation. 

She looked impossibly small then, sitting hunched over beside him in their lonely little forest camp, with her back pressed against a bare tree trunk and her eyes fixed on her lap. She looked… fragile. It was so at odds with everything Clint knew of her that he had trouble reconciling it with his mental image of the Natasha kept-fighting-after-getting-shot-four-times Romanoff he thought he knew. 

“There were twenty-eight of us,” she finally said, “Each night before we went to sleep, they would cuff us to the bedposts, partly so we’d learn how to slip out of them, and partly to ensure we wouldn’t run away. They wouldn’t give us the keys, so we had to work them off on our own in the morning, but the cuffs were electronic, and if we took them off in the middle of the night they’d know. Their brainwashing was so effective, we never even considered escaping. We – we thought it was normal to sleep in handcuffs.” 

She drew in a shaky breath, and Clint scooted closer to her side. 

“When they started sending me out on missions, I figured out that a lot of the things we accepted as normal were anything but that in the real world, but I—” she stopped suddenly, and her voice took on a desperate edge. “You have to understand, Clint, I’d never been outside the Red Room before, and I was… scared, and confused, and completely alone, and I needed security. That’s what these damn things were: security.” The cuffs jangled loosely in her hands, “So I didn’t stop using them, and now I can barely fall asleep without them, even though it’s a major safety hazard, and if someone attacked me while I was sleeping I wouldn’t be able to defend myself, and—” She broke off her rambling and took a deep breath before continuing. “Anyway, if I’ve seemed… off… recently, that’s why. It’s just because I haven’t been getting enough sleep, not anything to do with the mission.” 

Clint stared at her, openmouthed, with an unreadable expression on his face. Even he couldn’t tell what he was feeling right then: a jumbled mix of shock, anger, pity, horror, and an overwhelming need to make everything better. He had known, of course, that the Red Room’s methods had been torture, and handcuffs were probably the least of their worries, but something about seeing Natasha sitting there, telling him this like she was somehow to blame for the way she was raised… He couldn’t stand it. 

“Tasha,” he finally said, latching on to her last words as he struggled for the right thing to say, “ _Of course_ it has to do with the mission. That’s—you went through hell, Nat, and now you’ve got to relive it. Nobody should have to do that… I never should have let you come on this mission. I’m sorry.” 

“You didn’t _let me_ do anything. I wanted to do this.” 

“Yeah, I know. Sorry. I still feel bad,” Clint took a deep breath. “Can I ask you something?” 

She nodded. 

“Why?” he said, “Why did you want to take this mission? I mean, I know why _I_ would’ve done it, but what’s your reason?” 

It took a long time for her to answer. 

“Closure. Maybe,” she finally shrugged, another gesture that was unfamiliar on her, “To prove I’m over all of that, the Red Room, the KGB, everything.” 

“You don’t have to prove yourself to any—” 

“Yes I do.” 

Clint considered it for a moment before speaking. He wouldn’t lie to Natasha, and besides, she would know if he tried. “You don’t have to prove yourself to anybody who matters —no, hear me out,” he said when he saw her skeptical look, “Fury, Hill, some of the higher-ups, sure they don’t trust you yet. But they hardly trust anybody. Me and Coulson, we trust you. And you know who the higher-ups trust? Coulson. So you don’t have to worry about proving yourself, because you already have in all the ways that count.” 

Natasha gave him a shaky smile, so Clint continued. “No one’s expecting you to be perfect, Tasha. You’re only human.” 

“I was trained to be better than human.” 

“Fuck that! Your training was jacked,” Clint punctuated his words by slapping the ground between them. “We’re _all_ only human, and no one can ever be any more than that. Even Fury’s only human. If you prick him, does he not bleed? …And murder you in your sleep, but that’s not the point.” 

He actually got a laugh out of her for that. “Don’t you quote Shakespeare on me, mister I-can’t-sit-through-a-half-hour-tv-show-without-falling-asleep.” 

“Hey, that show was boring as hell. Besides,” Clint protested, adopting a mock aura of sophistication, “Shakespeare was written for the masses. The bro liked bad puns and dick jokes. He’s my kind of people.” 

Somehow, Clint had hit upon the right words to shake the haunted look out of her eyes. When she laughed it was with the wild edge of someone with too many skeletons in her closet, but it was good enough for Clint, and when she told him the rest of her story it was without the half-ashamed undercurrent in her voice. 

Some of the things she said that night, Clint already knew, but a lot of it was still new. He knew about her alias as a ballerina, but not the implanted memories. He knew about her selective knowledge of pop culture and her hatred for Disney movies, but not the rote memorization of movies to learn languages. He knew that the girls would frequently have to fight to the death, which he’d learned after she nearly had a panic attack one day when he suggested they spar. He hadn’t know how young she was when that first happened. 

The sun rose before she finished, and when Clint suggested they wait before moving on, Natasha accepted. 

“So, you handcuff yourself to that skinny little tree over there, and I’ll take the watch,” Clint said. It might have been a trick of the light, but he thought she looked relieved when he said that, as if she had been afraid he wouldn’t accept her after she told him her story. Or maybe she was just tired. 

(They did not have sex under the skinny little tree, despite what Tony said years later when he got a hold of the unredacted file.) 

Something changed after that mission, not only in their interactions, but in Natasha herself. A part of the Red Room was left behind with the other Black Widow. (In the end, they didn’t have to kill her. Natasha convinced her to break away from the KGB and create a life of her own. Clint was proud to hear some of his own phrases worked into the argument.) 

In the weeks following their return, she transformed herself. She rebuilt her identity from the ground up, and any part of her old self that she didn’t like was thrown out. Instead of shying away from the leftover demons of her childhood she faced them head on. The next time they were in a hotel together, she chucked her handcuffs in the trashcan with a grin and a satisfying _clunk._

Clint had never seen her so happy, or so sad in all the months that he’d known her, and he didn’t know how it was possible. When he accidentally got drunk and told her that, she quoted _Hermione futzing Granger_ at him, saying he had the emotional range of a teaspoon. He decided not to mention then that that would make him Ronald Weasley. 

When Clint first met Natasha, she couldn’t sleep without being handcuffed to a bed. Now, the exact opposite was true. She hadn’t fully let go of her past, but Clint knew better than most that she never would, or could. Years and years after they first met, after SHIELD decided to trust Natasha, after the Avengers became a team—Natasha still found herself haunted by the ghosts of the Red Room. 

And she still slept with her left arm above her head. 

Because old habits die hard, and often the oldest and nastiest are the hardest to kill.

**Author's Note:**

> Woo! Longest one in this series and it's only three futzing pages. Way to go, me. 
> 
> Anyway, if you like this and you like Clintasha you should totally check out the rest of my series *hint hint wink wink*


End file.
